Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2019/2020
If we move our clients towards self-compassion through our use of coaching tools such as Appreciative Inquiry we can assist them to reframe negative thoughts and commence the process of building on strengths.
Master Coach and Director of Kingstown College, Paula King, discusses the other ‘F’ word as she explains how working with forgiveness and self forgiveness are powerful steps for a client to improve their happiness and even their health.
I was struck by a conversation I had with one of my clients recently during our coaching session. He was encountering a particularly challenging time and our work together was focused on how we could release some of his time. An obvious resource would have appeared to be one of his peers who had both the expertise and experience to assist my client prepare a complicated report. When I questioned him on his rationale for not engaging with him my client told me that his colleague had upset him some years before and he would never forgive him. This decision, by my client, to retain such negative emotions for such a long time struck me deeply. The greatest gift we can give to ourselves is the gift of forgiveness – forgiving ourselves and others.
What is important about Forgiveness?
Negative life events, if significant enough, can get encoded in memory and often cause us to have physical reactions to remembering the painful experience. From the perspective of psychological research holding a grudge is considered an “imagined emotional response” (Witvliet, et al., 2001).
This would suggest that one must fuel the negative emotions in order to sustain them over a long period of time. For example, vengeful thoughts that embellish and describe the event with contempt only intensify the emotional imagery and physiological experience.
There is research, however, that shows the desire for revenge to be in some instances stronger than empathic motivation, especially in men. Participants in a Singer and Lamm study did not respond with empathy toward a person that was suffering, especially when they felt the person deserved punishment (2009).
“One moment of anger can wipe out a lifetime of merit”
Dalai Lama
As with so much of our behaviour as human beings, we need to practice the art of forgiveness as forgiveness is a muscle which must be developed. Indeed, some argue that empathy should be cultivated early on through ‘forgiveness education’. When inner turmoil ensues in adulthood, it may be tough to find our way to forgiveness if we’ve never practiced it before therefore teaching children and adolescents what forgiveness is and how people go about forgiving makes sense. Teaching forgiveness can help young people and, later, as adults forge stable and meaningful relationships with the understanding that anger does not need to result in discord and division.
Cultivating forgiveness is important because, many people are similar to my client and are nurturing negative emotions resentment and anger which can have serious implications for their mental health and wellbeing.
Studies show that being an object of transgression can be a significant cause for developing depression and that practicing forgiveness can alleviate feelings of anger, avoidance and vengeful-ness that lead to negative consequences in one’s emotional and physical health as well as relationships (Brown, 2003; McCullough et al., 1998).
According to the Mayo Clinic, deliberate letting go of negative emotions, particularly those that are strong and have been linked to forgiveness brings with it plenty of health benefits, including improved relationships, decreased anxiety and stress, lower blood pressure, a lowered risk of depression, and stronger immune and heart health.
One study found that letting go and adopting a merciful attitude toward the offender contributed to fewer cardiovascular and immune system problems (Witvliet, et al., 2001).
Other studies found forgiveness to be positively associated with five measures of health:
- physical symptoms,
- medications used,
- sleep quality,
- fatigue, and
- somatic complaints
(McCullough, Sandage, & Worthington, 1997; McCullough & Worthington, 1994; Thoresen, Harris, & Luskin, 1990).
Therefore research tells us that letting go of negative emotions can often have a remarkable impact on the body.
Self-Forgiveness
Some of the work carried out by Professor Paul Gilbert in the space of Compassion Focused Therapy can be useful for us, as coaches, when working with our clients who are experiencing difficulty forgiving perceived failures. In the following table we see how a client may view themselves when they encounter a perceived failure and have difficulty forgiving themselves. Their self -narrative can create deep upset for them. We see their focus is on past errors and concentrating on deficits which can only lead to deeply upsetting emotions.
[table “8” not found /]Table 1
Adapted from P. Gilbert (2009) The Compassionate Mind
If we move our clients towards self-compassion through our use of coaching tools such as Appreciative Inquiry we can assist them to reframe negative thoughts and commence the process of building on strengths rather than focusing on areas of negativity and frustrations.
Self-forgiveness entails fostering of positive emotions directed toward oneself; and the definition of self-forgiveness not only included the abandoning of self-directed negative emotion, but also the increase in positive or benevolent emotion like compassion, generosity, and love toward the self (Enright, 2001).
I work with many clients who are smart and talented people. They push themselves to achieve and if they encounter what they perceive to be failure, they can be extraordinarily hard on themselves. Coaching them towards the understanding of the importance of the gift of self-compassion is an important aspect of our coaching as no human being can truly become the best version of themselves and reach their potential if their self-narrative is critical and negative. Self-forgiveness is an important aspect of one’s ability to forgive others, in the same way as self-compassion is crucial to one’s predisposition to be compassionate toward other human beings.
Being kind to yourself and forgiving of your own shortcomings can give us much needed perspective on suffering and imperfections of others. It allows us to connect to others on the level of common humanity and can often be a humbling experience when evaluating what motivates other people’s behavior. Coaching tools such as ‘Switching Perspectives’ where we invite our clients to view the world through another’s eyes can be extremely powerful for our clients and assist them to view a relationship from a kinder and gentler perspective.
Studies in conflict resolution show that we tend to invent intentions for others when in most situations we know only our half of the story.
Wenzel et al. (2012) argued that self-forgiveness is best understood as a process by which we sever the negative link between taking responsibility and positive self-regard, which is a process that Holmgren (1998) referred to as genuine self-forgiveness.
The following table outlines the difference between shame-based self -attacking and compassionate self-correction.
[table “9” not found /]Table 2
Adapted from P. Gilbert (2009) The Compassionate Mind
So forgiving ourselves and others is important for our well-being and resilience. Loren Toussaint, an associate professor of psychology at Luther College in Iowa, discovered that if people were highly forgiving of both themselves and others, that characteristic alone virtually eliminated the connection between stress and mental illness.
Toussaint reminds us that without forgiveness we don’t have a buffer against stress and often will feel its raw effects. Even something as seemingly insignificant as a short prayer or a brief meditation on forgiveness can help people take the edge off (Toussaint at al., 2016).
Worthington and Scherer (2004) found that unforgiveness, when considered as a negative emotional and cognitive construct, causes stress.
Inability to forgive was also linked to anger and hostility, and those negative tendencies have proven to have a negative health effect, especially with regard to cardiovascular conditions.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius
Although dwelling on injustice, holding onto grudges and exacting vengeance are tempting options, study after study shows that forgiving those who have harmed us can systematically reduce distress and increase satisfaction with life.
Several studies linked forgiveness to more positive emotions and fewer symptoms of physical illness. One study found that forgiving on one day resulted in participants reporting higher levels of happiness on the next day (Witvliet, 2001; Worthington, 2004).
Forgiving was also found to be an effective emotion-focused coping strategy that could contribute to overall health and was also linked to more frequent experiences of positive emotions of empathy and compassion.
The role of empathy and apology in the process of forgiveness as well as their link to each other were based on the hypotheses that “the relationship between receiving an apology from and forgiving one’s offender is a function of increased empathy for the offender” in a study done by McCullough and colleagues (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997).
There is a proven link to gratitude and forgiveness. Practicing gratitude has been consistently linked to greater wellbeing in a study done by Emmons and McCullough, where it was measured by mood, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life satisfaction appraisals (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).
Since gratitude has been linked to empathy and empathy was found to have implications for forgiveness, there is potential that fostering gratitude could improve one’s capacity toward forgiveness.
When coaching your clients in this space of forgiveness I find the teachings from Naikan helpful.
Naikan is a Japanese word that means “looking inside,” though a more poetic translation might be “seeing oneself with the mind’s eye.” It is a structured method of self-reflection that helps us to understand ourselves, our relationships, and the fundamental nature of human existence.
Naikan was developed in Japan in the 1940s by Ishin Yoshimoto, a devout Buddhist. Naikan reflections is based on three questions:
The Three Questions
What have I received from ____?
What have I given to ____?
What troubles and difficulties have I caused ____?
This type of daily reflection is called daily Naikan (nichijo naikan).
So lets revisit my client who declared he could never forgive his colleague. I asked him these three questions having explained their origin.
What had he received from not forgiving his colleague?
His reflections here were that what he was receiving was negative and upsetting emotions
What had he given to improve this situation?
My client acknowledged that he, at no point, had attempted to improve the situation and acknowledged that, in fact, he had done the exact opposite. Taking every opportunity to criticize his colleague
What troubles and difficulties have I caused due to my decision not to forgive?
This part of our coaching session was extremely emotional for my client. He became quite upset when he began to discuss the option of forgiveness. His belief was deeply entrenched that this situation could never change. Viewing this from a different perspective shifted his view completely of the relationship. When he began to discuss his colleague from a compassionate perspective he realised that, if he approached him, his colleague would welcome his overtures and work with him to resolve the situation. Which, in fact, was exactly what happened.
So, lets celebrate the beauty of the F word and be compassionate to ourselves and others by giving the gift of forgiveness as often as possible.
By Paula King
